1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

TMPEGEnc encoding problems at low bitrates

Discussion in 'MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 encoding (AVI to DVD)' started by 645, May 3, 2005.

  1. 645

    645 Member

    Joined:
    Nov 7, 2003
    Messages:
    18
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    11
    I've got a long-running TV series that I intend to burn to DVD on as few discs as possible, so I'm trying to see how low I can take the bitrate while still keeping the video quality acceptable. I'm using TMPEGEnc3XP to encode in VBR and am having odd results with the output video when I take the average bitrate to low levels. The video quality itself seems to be very nice, much better than I expected, but it tends to skip and freeze for seconds at a time. I'm thinking that it's using too high of a bitrate for some parts and is forced to mutilate the rest of the video to bring the average down. I can expirement a little and probably find suitable settings myself, but it's taking a while to test and re-encode everything, so I thought I'd ask for opinions. Two questions:

    1) Generally, what's the lowest bitrate I can expect to use for MPEG-2 while keeping the output acceptable? As in, maybe a little bit of artifacting or pixelation here and there but generally smooth with no skipping? The source video has hard subs encoded into the video file, so it's imperative that those remain readable.

    2) What's a good cutoff for the maximum and minimum bitrates when encoding in VBR?
     
    Last edited: May 4, 2005
  2. rebootjim

    rebootjim Active member

    Joined:
    May 13, 2004
    Messages:
    2,630
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    66
    1) 2500kbps is about SVCD quality (VHS). Any lower and it's not worth it. Try a CBR encode at that rate, see how it looks.
    You could also try a CQ-VBR encode and test that.
    If you want better quality, at lower bitrates, try the KDVD templates.

    2) Keep max and min no more than 2k apart...that is, if your max is 3500, make the min 1500 (3500-1500=2000), with average at 2500. To keep file sizes down, do not put a tick in "add padding..."
     

Share This Page